Laundry Volcano

At the risk of being quite embarrassed by the following picture of myself, I would like to share one of our ideas with you--one that actually worked . . .

With the birth of each child, I have watched our laundry pile grow exponentially.  I dump loads of clean, unfolded laundry on my bed, my reasoning being that I will be more likely to fold it because I need to sleep there at night.  But it doesn't work--we usually end up putting piles around the floor in my room and sleeping amid the towels and shirts.  One day I hauled the loads out into the living room and hollered for the kids to gather to play "Laundry Volcano" (I am a firm believer in Mary Poppins' philosophy that if you name a job something fun, it seems more fun . . . ).

How to play Laundry Volcano, as described by my kids:
1. Get lots of laundry.
2. Choose where people's piles go. It helps to put something of theirs in each spot.
3. Choose a person to throw the laundry (it's usually Mommy because she's the tallest).
4. The Volcano Person (i.e. Mommy) throws the laundry up into the sky.  It's the lava.
5. The kids catch the lava and put it in whose ever pile it goes. It helps if Mommy throws it high and you grab it out of the air.
6. At the end is folding. Everybody folds their own pile. (Gabe folds no pile--he helps fold the washcloths)
7. Put away your own laundry as fast as you can.
8. Mommy folds the extra stuff.